Welcome to the International Skeptics Forum, where we discuss skepticism, critical thinking, the paranormal and science in a friendly but lively way. You are currently viewing the forum as a guest, which means you are missing out on discussing matters that are of interest to you. Please consider
registering so you can gain full use of the forum features and interact with other Members. Registration is simple, fast and free! Click here to register today.

The rhyme for converting liquid measure is: "A litre of water's a pint and three-quarters." But those are imperial pints (one eighth of an imperial gallon). An imperial (UK) pint is a fraction over 1.2 US pints (actually 1.20095) - so about a US pint and a fifth.

The rhyme for converting liquid measure is: "A litre of water's a pint and three-quarters." But those are imperial pints (one eighth of an imperial gallon). An imperial (UK) pint is a fraction over 1.2 US pints (actually 1.20095) - so about a US pint and a fifth.

Location: stranded at Buenos Aires, a city that, like NYC or Paris, has so little to offer...

Posts: 9,397

I'm comfortable using leagues (= 6000 rods).

Also versts, zazhens and vershoks, which made the largest country the world ever knew.

I'd also use ferrados, if they agreed what it is, then I'd sow a ferrado of corn for my own consumption.

__________________Horrible dipsomaniacs and other addicts, be gone and get treated, or covfefe your soul!These fora are full of scientists and specialists. Most of them turn back to pumpkins the second they log out.I got tired of the actual schizophrenics that are taking hold part of the forum and decided to do something about it.

__________________The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.Bertrand Russell
Zooterkin is correct Darat
Nerd! Hokulele
Join the JREF Folders ! Team 13232Ezekiel 23:20

We don't generally use cups as a measure in cooking in the UK (though that may be slowly changing due to their prevalence in recipes on the web).

__________________The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.Bertrand Russell
Zooterkin is correct Darat
Nerd! Hokulele
Join the JREF Folders ! Team 13232Ezekiel 23:20

Location: stranded at Buenos Aires, a city that, like NYC or Paris, has so little to offer...

Posts: 9,397

Originally Posted by WhatRoughBeast

How about poles and chains?

That, and furlongs and links ... and for areas, Texan labors.

__________________Horrible dipsomaniacs and other addicts, be gone and get treated, or covfefe your soul!These fora are full of scientists and specialists. Most of them turn back to pumpkins the second they log out.I got tired of the actual schizophrenics that are taking hold part of the forum and decided to do something about it.

I brew my own beer and working in kgs or grams and using litres for liquid measure makes things simple. The big complication comes when you're looking at recipes - is that recipe originate in the US - in which case that 5 gallon recipe is 19l, or did it come from the UK - in which case the 5 gallon recipe is 23l.

The US should focus on what's important - getting consistent beer - and ditch the imperial system.

I mean I can't image that compared to say translating a language which has thousands of words and things like inflection and nuance and stuff can easily get "lost in translation" (and with extremely disparate languages you could imagine can never be 100% perfectly translated) or even things like time zones and which side of the street the car is designed for or any one of take your pick out of hundreds upon thousands of regional and country variations in standards and standardization really a thing?

If you're a American doing business with... Japan (or vice versa) is a simple, even automated math equation to change Kilometers or Miles really even a drop in the bucket compared to having to the entirely different linguistic root, alphabet, sentence structure, grammar and so forth language to the other?

At least with Metric/Imperial and Imperial/Metric you have a hard and fast mathematical way to convert the objective data with no loss of... fidelity or detail or nuance or context something that can't be said for translating almost any other

In a world where there... what a good several dozen "international" languages and countless languages in some level of common use, hundreds of different organizations trying to enforce various "official" standards on everything from traffic to how to make a cup of tea is the 4.4 percent of the global population that uses a, admittedly nonsensical, measurement system really causing that much of a problem?

I hate the Imperial system and do think America should go metric, but trying to paint this as America being some sort of amazingly weird outlier that's causing all these problems seems a bit much.

Often if you aren't familiar with the two systems, you don't have a feel that you've done the conversion the wrong way, and 6ft is not approximately 20m but 6m is approximately 20 ft, for example.

I think such a mistake was made further upthread.

Originally Posted by Trebuchet

A pint's a pound the world round only in the USA.

This is where I get confused, because I know enough about British Imperial to know that 20fl Oz in a pint, and 8 pints in a gallon, so a UK gallon of water is 10 lbs

I get really confused by US pints and gallons.

What did surprise me was that about ten years ago, my young son (primary-school age) got a small model fishing boat as a souvenir and described it (accurately) as "about a couple of inches long".

Depending on the situation, I'll use either metric or imperial measures probably with a slight preference for metric.

__________________OECD healthcare spending
Expenditure on healthcarehttp://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/health-data.htm
link is 2015 data (2013 Data below):
UK 8.5% of GDP of which 83.3% is public expenditure - 7.1% of GDP is public spending
US 16.4% of GDP of which 48.2% is public expenditure - 7.9% of GDP is public spending

Using 3 significant digits the range of -99.9°C to 99.9°C covers the range of temperatures found on the whole planet (world records, -89.2°C, 56.7°C). And 0.1°C is the appropriate resolution for the accuracy of commercially available wide measurement range thermometers.

Often if you aren't familiar with the two systems, you don't have a feel that you've done the conversion the wrong way, and 6ft is not approximately 20m but 6m is approximately 20 ft, for example.

I think such a mistake was made further upthread.

And here it was

Originally Posted by rjh01

Let us compare the two systems. Starting with length.
Imperial
12 inches make a foot
3 feet make a yard
1760 yards make a mile

Metric
1000mm make a meter
100cm make a meter
1000 meters make a kilometer

All common measurements. Yet one uses almost random numbers to convert and the other uses powers of 10. That is one advantage of metric. I could use almost any type of measurement and my argument would still work. Then how do you express a length? In imperial it might 2 feet 5 inches. In metric it would 1.24 meters.

Not surprising if one doesn't have any reason to have a feel for the relative size of the units.

Mind you - I can't see an obvious cause of an error that would cause such a value.

__________________OECD healthcare spending
Expenditure on healthcarehttp://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/health-data.htm
link is 2015 data (2013 Data below):
UK 8.5% of GDP of which 83.3% is public expenditure - 7.1% of GDP is public spending
US 16.4% of GDP of which 48.2% is public expenditure - 7.9% of GDP is public spending

I've never seen that for ambient temperatures in Canada, which I can see from where I'm sitting.

Since the temperature variation around a yard will usually vary by more than 2°C/3.6°F, public weather reports are usually rounded to the nearest whole degree in either units. However if you dig in to the official records you'll find the temperatures are actually recorded to 0.1°C but only 1°F by the NWS.

The reason people I know, and myself sometimes, like °F better is because we feel 100° is a better number to feel way too hot and 0° is a better number to feel way too cold, 38° and -18° just seem wrong :-), However basing the choice of units of measurement on human feelings is not a good reason to stick with a system used almost nowhere else on the planet and when forced to change people adapt in only a generation of two (e.g. Canadians).

Location: stranded at Buenos Aires, a city that, like NYC or Paris, has so little to offer...

Posts: 9,397

I'm amazed by how many Brits say "I must lose a stone". Once I met a chap who had lost a stone. I remember having though "poor guy! he surely screamed like Tarzan while passing it!"

__________________Horrible dipsomaniacs and other addicts, be gone and get treated, or covfefe your soul!These fora are full of scientists and specialists. Most of them turn back to pumpkins the second they log out.I got tired of the actual schizophrenics that are taking hold part of the forum and decided to do something about it.

...The reason people I know, and myself sometimes, like °F better is because we feel 100° is a better number to feel way too hot and 0° is a better number to feel way too cold, 38° and -18° just seem wrong :-), However basing the choice of units of measurement on human feelings is not a good reason to stick with a system used almost nowhere else on the planet and when forced to change people adapt in only a generation of two (e.g. Canadians).

Generally speaking more lines/ticks per thingamawhatsit are better. It's probably psychological. They probably should have made Celsius go to 200 degrees for the boiling point of water. 200 gradations compared to Fahrenheit's puny 180!

After binge watching too many AvE youtube videos, I understand the Canadians also tried to foist Metric time onto each and every Canadian citizen. This, after the Euros had conceded defeat to the awesomeness of imperial base twelve. A ten hour day is a very long day indeed.

Still haven't seen an answer to this, except a joke one, and I'm curious. What's the size of standard wine (or liquor) bottles in Europe/UK/your country.

According to EU directive 75/106/EEC from December 1974, Appendix 3 (on page 12), which was repealed again in 2009, there are two standard sizes of bottles permitted between 0.5 and 1 liter, viz. 0.70l and 0.75l, both for wine and for spirits.

And according to this working paper from EU DG Enterprise from 2002, the vast majority of wine bottles are 0.75l, whereas spirits bottles are 0.70l.

__________________"I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people." - "Saint" Teresa, the lying thieving Albanian dwarf

Modern Linux distributions have a program called units [wikipedia.org] that can convert between an astonishing variety of different units, sometimes in complex ways. Even more interesting than the program, though, it is definitions file [github.com]. Not only does it have thousands of entries, many for esoteric and obsolete units, it has hundreds of comments with many fascinating details.

__________________The social illusion reigns to-day upon all the heaped-up ruins of the past, and to it belongs the future. The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce them. Gustav Le Bon, The Crowd, 1895 (from the French)Canadian or living in Canada? PM me if you want an entry on the list of Canadians on the forum.

I really hope there's a special place in a fiery hell somewhere reserved for cups.

I'm a (UK) pastry chef. I work in grams.

I need accurate measurements or things don't work right.

Everytime I try out a new recipe for something I deconstruct it and rebuild it in grams, and recipes that involve cups of stuff are the most annoying ones to get right.

Amateur pastry chef here in the US and that's the method I try to do as well when at all practicable. Once I got used to simply measuring the ingredients out by weight, I dunno... it just seems simpler to me. I can mix different ingredients in the same bowl, for example, just going by weight.

It's really helped improve my final product (though I still make rather silly mistakes; this past Thanksgiving, I made two wonderful pumpkin pies — sans sugar. Oops.)

In pre-metric days, the standard beer bottle size was 26 oz (738.738 mL). When Australia went metric the size was increased slightly to 750 mL so that the breweries could sell more beer.

There is a parallel in the milk industry. The marketers weren't prepared to sell milk by the half-litre since that could mean that people who previously bought milk by the pint (568.26 mL) might decrease their milk consumption accordingly. So the new milk bottle size became 600 ML.

BTW 26 oz is not a "quart"er of anything. However, by calling it a "quart" if gives the buyer the impression that they are buying a quarter of a gallon of beer (even though 1/4 of a gallon is actually 40 oz). It's the same reason why in many states, a 15 oz beer glass is referred to as a "pint" (even though 1 pint = 20 oz).

__________________i loves the little birdies they goes tweet tweet tweet hee hee i loves them they sings to each other tweet twet tweet hee hee i loves them they is so cute i love yje little birdies little birdies in the room when birfies sings ther is no gloom i lobes the little birdies they goess tweet tweet tweet hee hee hee i loves them they sings me to sleep sing me to slrrp now little birdies - The wisdom of Shemp.

__________________i loves the little birdies they goes tweet tweet tweet hee hee i loves them they sings to each other tweet twet tweet hee hee i loves them they is so cute i love yje little birdies little birdies in the room when birfies sings ther is no gloom i lobes the little birdies they goess tweet tweet tweet hee hee hee i loves them they sings me to sleep sing me to slrrp now little birdies - The wisdom of Shemp.

I really hope there's a special place in a fiery hell somewhere reserved for cups.

I'm a (UK) pastry chef. I work in grams.

I need accurate measurements or things don't work right.

Everytime I try out a new recipe for something I deconstruct it and rebuild it in grams, and recipes that involve cups of stuff are the most annoying ones to get right.

Originally Posted by The Norseman

Amateur pastry chef here in the US and that's the method I try to do as well when at all practicable. Once I got used to simply measuring the ingredients out by weight, I dunno... it just seems simpler to me. I can mix different ingredients in the same bowl, for example, just going by weight.

It's really helped improve my final product (though I still make rather silly mistakes; this past Thanksgiving, I made two wonderful pumpkin pies — sans sugar. Oops.)

Your scale almost certainly won't work on the moon, or in any other gravitational field. But volume is always the same.

__________________It must be fun to lead a life completely unburdened by reality. -- JayUtahI am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage (1791-1871)

Location: stranded at Buenos Aires, a city that, like NYC or Paris, has so little to offer...

Posts: 9,397

Originally Posted by Senex

My people got to the moon.
You people set back the Hubble.

"What a dust I've raised!" said the fly upon the coach.

__________________Horrible dipsomaniacs and other addicts, be gone and get treated, or covfefe your soul!These fora are full of scientists and specialists. Most of them turn back to pumpkins the second they log out.I got tired of the actual schizophrenics that are taking hold part of the forum and decided to do something about it.

__________________"It never does just what I want, but only what I tell it."
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."

Still haven't seen an answer to this, except a joke one, and I'm curious. What's the size of standard wine (or liquor) bottles in Europe/UK/your country.

Here's an answer for why the standard wine bottle is 75cl

Quote:

The volume of 75cl was standardized in the 19th century. At that time, the biggest clients for the French wines were the British.

The close neighbors do not use the metric system and used to order wine in “imperial gallon”. One gallon is about 4.546 liters.

Barrels were used to transport wine at that time. One barrel is 50 gallons, about 225 liters. A real nightmare for conversion! So to ease the calculation, the wine makers from Bordeaux decided that 1 barrel would be 300 bottles of wine instead of 225.

__________________"It never does just what I want, but only what I tell it."
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."

Same as when I studied it in the USA. Of course, you sometimes have to use that 9.8 factor in the Metric world.

........

Some metric enthusiasts proudly point out that they use mass instead of volume when measuring out cooking products. Except they aren't. They're using weight. On the moon, my cup of flour will still be a cup of flour. Your 60 grams of sugar will be 10. Unless you use a balance scale, of course.

Well yes the Gram or Kilogram is a unit of mass and strictly speaking we should measure weight in Newtons - it being the force needed to resist our gravitational pull.

Many or most non technical people don't understand why we have a unit of force as well as a unit of mass. When you do dynamic calculations or calculate weight on other planets you see the reason why.

Had a heated discussion with a guy who resisted embracing the metric system some years ago. "Why couldn't they make the value of "g" 10 instead of 9.806" he said. I patiently explained that the value was determined by the gravitational force as was the imperial value of 32.2.

My father was an engineer who never had to do dynamic calculations, and regarded the Newton with great suspicion. He blamed the existence of the Newton on Sir Isaac Newton. "They should have shot that bastard" he would exclaim.

Your scale almost certainly won't work on the moon, or in any other gravitational field. But volume is always the same.

BTW, that's not the best usage of pumpkins.

Ignoring the idea of baking moon pies...

The density of baking ingredients is not always consistent, which is why bakers use weight. Flour is compressible, as is brown sugar. Salt varies based on crystal size. Eggs are not always the same size. These small variations affect the ratios of ingredients, and can have a noticeable effect on the final product.

This forum began as part of the James Randi Education Foundation (JREF). However, the forum now exists as an independent entity with no affiliation with or endorsement by the JREF, including the section in reference to "JREF" topics.

Disclaimer: Messages posted in the Forum are solely the opinion of their authors.